Jordan Casteel on Light, Loss, and the Tenderness of Looking An interview with the artist
By Erica Silverman
The presentation, the most significant of her work in Europe to date, gathers paintings made during the first half of 2026. They are rendered in a hushed, verdant palette that seems to glow from within, as if lit by the low gold of a December afternoon. Portraits, landscapes, and still lifes sit side by side, bound by an emotional register that holds grief and joy in the same breath. In before your time, a family rests close together in a New York subway car, a continuation of the Subway series she began in 2015. In Weighted (For Clyde), Casteel turns inward, depicting herself with her newborn son, their faces withheld so that touch and color carry the feeling. Her garden pictures, including Last Blooms and Memorial (For John), extend the same reverence to petals and stems that she gives to her human sitters. […]
Whitewall: The title 'Winter Sun' carries a sense of contradiction: warmth within coldness, light arriving during a dormant season. How did this particular moment of transition become a framework for the works in the exhibition?
Jordan Casteel: I paint year-round, and my work is primarily rooted in observation, in the people and places I’m surrounded by. For this body of work, I began thinking about what to paint just as the winter season was entering the air. I had experienced a loss in my family, while at the same time we were preparing to welcome a new member. I remember seeing the colors of a sunset one evening and feeling inspired to carry those into the exhibition. That moment held much of what I was experiencing at the time: darkness and light, all existing at the same time. […]
WW: Throughout 'Winter Sun,' moments of growth and tenderness exist alongside an awareness of absence and mortality. When you think about what it means to preserve a moment through painting, what does the medium offer you that memory alone cannot?
JC: I don’t paint from just one photograph, but from several that I use to build a composition after spending time documenting a sitter, a landscape or still life. We don’t experience anything as a single image. Our eyes are constantly moving, collecting different angles, gestures, expressions, and details over time. A memory is made up of all of those views. When I return to the studio, I’m drawing from that collective experience rather than trying to reproduce a single moment. I work wet on wet in oil and never go back to a section once it’s complete, so the medium offers me both fluidity and a forced endpoint. And, of course, it offers me color. As much as my practice is about observing and uplifting my subjects, it is also about mark-making through the medium. I begin by covering the canvas in a single wash that creates a kind of background glow. I draw with the paint and I never feel the need to be completely faithful to a particular tone or shadow. Painting allows the memory of an encounter to become something other than a record of it.' […]
